


Forgiving.

by ilikeshipping



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben does a lot of thinking, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), Forgiveness, Power Imbalance, Soulmates, force ghost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23413321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilikeshipping/pseuds/ilikeshipping
Summary: Ben Solo finds Rey in a crumpled heap. He has some thoughts - perhaps the first thoughts that had never been tampered with or swayed. He truly was Ben Solo and she was Rey. She was laying in his arms, limp.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Forgiving.

**Author's Note:**

> idek what this is tbh im sorry for even posting it...

He limped; dragged his bag of broken bones along the cracked surface of the earth. His heart thumping erratically in his ears, his blood had run cold. The surge of electricity in the air made him feel like he was choking. His body couldn’t handle the walk, so he slumped to the earth and continued to crawl, intermittently spitting blood from his cracked lips. Ben Solo was well and truly a broken soul, broken man. Everything had come to an end.

He had expected to die alone in the pit, his body had fought enough, it wanted rest. Emotional and physical rest, something he had deprived it of since he was a pre-teen and heard the looming, dark and terrible voices that swum around in his brain. Yet, something: some type of energy, dragged his nearly rotting corpse from the monstrous hole in the ground.

For the last year, he had waves of her emotions, her life force had flown gently through his veins, entered his brain when he felt weak and lifted him up. Before he would curse it and try use it to his muddled advantage – when he was on the wrong side of history. It felt like a wave of warmth, her memories floated into his subconscious when he slept or they’d creep up when he was alert… Desert planets, unexplainable hunger and thirst for life, for love, for something. In most ways he cursed their affinity, their connection, but in other ways it made him feel – for that moment in time- that he as alive, he had lived. If only for a few minutes, whilst the power of their bond surged.

Now, there was heart aching silence, the hum of their bond existed no more. Her life force gone from his veins; her light no longer lived among his darkness. Ben Solo had thought all of his life that he was truly alone and up until now, he was not. She was there catching him as he fell every single time. Now, he truly was alone.

It felt like his neck was breaking as he raised his head to see in front of him and when he did, his full body spasmed with pain. She lay there, a small crumpled heap in the middle of a corrupted, broken room. The pillars were crumbling and falling around them, like shooting stars in the blue light. The sound of ships soaring above them, destroying The Final Order fleet.

He crawled to her, reaching his hand to feel for her pulse. He let out a strangled breath, when he felt the coldness, the limpness; life had been robbed from her. She fought the never-ending fight, constantly doing the right thing, looking out for what mattered in her life most, something he never did. He wished he could have been like her, that he could learn from her. He feared the fact he would never be able to look in her eyes again, or feel her warm hand lightly touch his fingertips. In every parallel universe, on every planet in the solar system, even where the sun did not shine, even on planets in the furthest corner of the galaxy, he’d whisper and tell her that she is not alone and finally after waiting what felt like lightyears, she’d whisper back “neither are you.”

He rolled her body over to see her face. Her eyes were open, still. They unnerved him, she was looking straight through him, no colour in her cheeks, no twinkle left in the small brown, beautiful planets that orbited in her eye sockets. He let out a small sob and looked around – his voice felt trapped in his chest. He was about to helplessly scream for someone to come down and save her, but for once they were completely alone in this. Luke wasn’t there anymore to break into the hut and see them sheepishly touching hands, like two pre-teens who know nothing of anything. Deprived of normalcy throughout childhood, riddled with pain, heartache and loneliness.

He pulled her lifeless body close and begun to soundlessly cry.

He had imagined being able to touch her freely with no one watching him, to really feel her, her warmth, her light. He wanted to be able to touch the deepest parts of her soul with his mind and be with her. He wanted to be better for her, he had finally accepted his pull to the light, and it was her, bringing him back down to where he always should have been.

Suddenly there was an overpowering silence as he held her close – his body shook whilst he cried. He didn’t have anything else to give to her, he had nothing. He thought of what it would be like if the roles were reversed. He knew that within their bond, Rey was the only one who could go on in life, make real difference, illicit real change. He knew that he couldn’t achieve that – who would he go to? His mother was no longer on this plane, fighting with the resistance. They wouldn’t want him; they would crucify him for his crimes and take him away from Rey. He was used to not being wanted but he couldn’t punish Rey with that life, he couldn’t walk back to the resistance with her lifeless body in his arms and tell them he had tried everything to bring her back – they’d simply never believe him. They didn’t know the extent of the dyad; they didn’t know him. His parents didn’t even know him, his soul had cracked and morphed into a broken supernova over the years he had left the light.

Ben shakily brought Rey’s body back down into his lap, resting her gently on his legs. He hissed at the dead weight resting on his very broken legs – but he didn’t care. She couldn’t go back to the force; she was needed here. He needed her to come back, to lead the resistance to their final victory. She was needed and wanted, cherished by everyone she had touched. He wasn’t needed like her.

He lay his hand on her small abdomen and closed his eyes – channelling every crack of the galaxy that the force was residing silently in. He chanted “be with me” over and over. He hadn’t reached out like this for years, since he was a small boy, but the want and hurt in his heart told him it was the only option left. Surely the force would be able to feel that he wasn’t asking for himself, that instead he was pleading with the stars on behalf of Rey’s life. He kept his eyes closed and subconsciously searched within himself, to find the buried light she had left within him, he worked on it, trying to coax it to come alive.

“Be with me” he chanted brokenly over and over.

There was a sudden and desperate shift, it was like he had opened his floodgates. He felt his grandfather, he felt his uncle, he felt the force of every Jedi who ever lived, touch his shoulder and he heard whispers of their voices. They encouraged him to keep going, to follow this path that was left inside of him. The path to the light.

He felt overwhelmed, full to the brim of light, of hope. He questioned if this was how his mother had felt all the time. He felt like for a brief moment, his mind, soul and body weren’t broken and that he could see clearly even with his eyes shut.

He channelled his last remaining life force and focused into transferring it to Rey, he felt that hope, the light that had built up slowly leave him. He had never felt this want before in his sad life; he had no purpose before this. This was what he was meant to do, he was saving the cause. He had lived his treacherous life to be taught a lesson, that even hope in the darkest of times was the only way out.

He stopped chanting and let the light settle within her. The unsettling silence came back and for a moment he was completely alone with his thoughts. He was scared to death, but he felt like he had finally been woken up from his never-ending nightmare. He finally had the clarity he needed, there was no longer a booming voice playing with his strings and telling him right from wrong and how to feel. He was Ben again. For a moment.

A hand suddenly rested lightly on his and his eyes snapped open. Rey’s face, still beaten and bloody had regained colour, life, the twinkle in her eyes was back. She stared at him for a minute and he let her. Her eyes trailed over his face, from his eyes to his bruised and cut cheeks, to his lips. She slowly shifted herself up, to sit face to face with him.

“Ben” She whispered.

Ben’s heart hammered in his chest, his breathing was fast, he had finally gotten everything he had ever wanted, and it had been planted down in his lap. He had never meant to fall for her, but here she was, all these months later, calling him by his birth name… again. This time, it didn’t make him wince in pain, it didn’t make him think of his mother calling on him for dinner. As a kid and even as an adult he was not used to getting what he wanted and was unsure of how to go on from this point. He decided to not think too deeply about it, to let his cynical, over analysing brain rest for once. No questions asked.

His hand moved up to hold the nape of her neck, which was warm again. He could feel her breath dancing over his face, her eyes frantically taking in every single mole and freckle on his face. He felt naked, like this time he was truly being seen by her. She raised her hand to his face and hovered there for a second. Her smile faltered in this moment and then her hand finally came to rest on his cheek.

It was a bond decision, the force quite literally shoved them together and their lips brushed against one another. The emotion, the pain, the love, the light was all there as she pulled him closer and held him. She kissed him as if he was about to leave her and this was her last moment with him. In that moment, he couldn’t have been happier; he wasn’t going to disappoint her again, he’d never leave her. To hell with thinking about what his parents thought, what Snoke thought, Vader, the resistance… They didn’t matter, only Rey did. He could only see her and feel her now in his mind’s eye.

They mutually drew away from each other, their eyes connected. Ben felt his lips pull into a broad smile. The muscles felt weird, like they hadn’t been used in a long time. A weird static feeling then started to pour over his body and his smile faltered. Rey looked hurt, confused, she started desperately looking at him. She shot a message through the bond as she was too exhausted to speak.

“What’s wrong?”

Ben looked down slightly and could feel the static feeling flow down into his limbs, the pain in his legs finally left him. He looked back up at her one last time and pushed his overwhelming feelings of love through their bond. It finally dawned on him, he had bargained with the force, he knew that he had given his everything for her to be alive. It only made sense that in order for her to go on, he could not. His life force had given up and he was left with only these brief moments. He wasn’t really angry though. Finally, he was doing the right thing.

He could feel it coming. He used his last dying breath and power to push an important thought and memory through the bond.

“I hope one day you will forgive me, Rey.”

Ben’s body started to fall backward, but Rey grabbed on for dear life so that his head would not fall to the ground. She let him down gently and just stared. A blink, one tear filled blink and his body was gone, as if it had never existed. A hazy dream, the prince she used to dream about on Jakku.

Rey was left with whispers of their first moments together, the ghost of his touch hovering at her fingertips and finally a static feeling on her lips. She lifted her hand to her mouth and touched her lips, where his had only been moments ago.

She raised her head and looked to the stars, the tears streaming down her bruised, bloody and puffy face. The resistance had prevailed, the Final Order was crumbling, like dead stars falling through the night sky. She looked straight past it all and finally whispered:

“I forgive you.”


End file.
